Back in 1994 Sega released Dynamite Headdy on the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), a platform/action game in which you play as the star puppet Headdy, who can attack his enemies by shooting his detachable head at them. 

 

Headdy is the star of the Treasure Theatre production of Dynamite Headdy. He has come to North Town from the country in order to visit his friends HeadCase, HangMan and Beau, but arrives to find that the evil puppet king Dark Demon is in the midst of attacking the puppet town to select which of the peaceful toys should live and which should be converted into his evil minions. Headdy is captured by the Robo-Collector and rejected by D.D.'s forces, and is dropped into the dust cargo to be thrown into the incinerator. However, Headdy escapes the clutches of Dark Demon's minions and sets off to defeat the evil king.

 

However, trouble is afoot. Not only is the puppet world filled with Dark Demon's minions, but to reach the evil overlord's castle Headdy must defeat Dark Demon's Keymasters, who serve as the king's elite guard. To make matters worse, Headdy is followed by his lifelong rival Trouble Bruin, a puppet jealous of Headdy's success. Bruin wants to be the star instead of Headdy, and will stop at nothing to get rid of him.

 

The game is played over a series of "scenes" and "acts", the end of which is often typified by a big boss battle. Headdy's special power is his launchable head. This can be fired in eight directions: up and down, left and right, and the four diagonals in between. Launching it at enemies can damage or destroy them.

 

His head can also be used to hold on to a "HangMan", a character that acts like a hook. By grabbing a HangMan with your head, the player can then use it to hurl themselves in its direction, as if connected by an elastic band. Headdy can also swap his head for a special head, if he attacks a HeadCase. Depending on the symbol that the HeadCase is showing, Headdy will get a different head with a different special power.

 

Scattered across the levels are a number of Secret Bonus Points. These can be collected by performing a strange or skilled action, such as finding a hidden item or defeating an enemy that is difficult to reach.

 

By getting powerups from HeadCase, it is possible to collect 15 heads in the main levels, and three others in the flying sections. Most of them last until they wear off, or until the A button is pressed. However, Head Trip can only be removed by it wearing off after a period of time. Pin Head and the flying-level heads can only be removed by changing to another head.

 

Amazing game, lovely visuals, the music is nice and it's actually a hard to beat game. Very challenging. Would love to see this on XBLA.  

 

 

The Story goes like this:

 

I had bought 3 games long before the 360 came out, being waiting 3 months before I was able to actually play the games first thing I did as soon as I was able to do so was to pop in PDZ (Perfect Dark Zero) the games everyone was talking about. Well, guess what, after tryin to play the game for a few weeks I finally went to the local GameStop and traded it in for Halo 1 and King Kong. I thought to myself, "what is it about FPSs that people love so much? This game sucks, is there any other game that represents the genre that it's actually good?" Obviously I've heard about Halo countless times so I gave it a try. Man that game IS good! So yes, the first game I ever finished on my 360 was Halo, a backward compatible game.  But since this Featurette is about 360 games, Halo doesn't count... does it? I had to put that up there. (I really think PDZ sucked, big time)

 

Peter Jackson's King Kong might not be the greatest thing ever, but at the time the game looked amazing to me, and I was actually able to play it, throughly, from end to end whithout getting super frustrated while trying. A lot of people complain that it's too easy or that it looks horrible. What can I say, I like games that don't require you to try 1000 times to get through, and the game looked great on my 42" HDTV. Loved the fact that there's no GUI (graphical user interface) (a concept adapted later on in Gears of War) and the 5.1 Surround sound just blew my mind. Funny, the way the NPCs talk made the need for a tutorial totally not needed and actually fun. That's a good thing.

 

Playability wise I think the game does a pretty nice job, except when you play as Kong. Not being able to control the camera at times made the whole experience painful. Sadly the game doesn't actually have any replayability value besides going for High Score, but even that doesn't give you any achievements so... Play it once, and that's about it.

 

The story of the game is pretty much what the movie is about so I'm not gonna go into details here, just watch the movie. Or play the game.

 

If I were to score this game I would give it a 6.5 out of 10.

 

 

Anyway, so the time came in which me and my brother finally got ourselves a (European) Sega Master System. The system came with a game preinstalled, being that game Alex Kidd in Miracle World, it was obviously the first game we ever owned. The year was 1992 I think.

 

I remember spending countless hours trying to beat the game, reason why is because the game didn't have a save point feature so whenever you died or run out of the in-game money it would be game over. 

 

The game is basically a Platformer, but you had a few vehicles you could use, the only ones I remember are the motorcycle and a helicopter. Man the helicopter was hard!!   (yes I know there's a boat showing on one of pictures I've uploaded but I can't remember that part of the game... :-(   The game is not too long nor too hard either so it's easy to master after playing it a few times.

 

I've found out (while looking for pictures) that there are other versions of Alex Kidd. Though I didn't play any of these, and just for informative purposes, they are: 

 

Alex Kidd in Shinobi World

Alex Kidd and The Lost Stars

Alex Kidd in High-Tech World

Alex Kidd BMS Trial

Alex Kidd and the Enchanted Castle

 

Anyone played any of these? If you did, let me know your thoughts in the comments box below.

 

Yep, starting today I'm adding two new sections on the site.

 

One is the "Games I have good memories of." in which I'll talk about games I have played through out the years and I have some fond memories of.  

 

And the second is going to be: "Xbox 360 completed games" in which obviously I'll talk about games that I have totally completed, and to which I'll give my rating of.

 

Both sections will be comprised of an Article (or blog), a set of pictures and, when available, a video of the gameplay. 

 

So, even though there's no article today, I've uploaded some pictures already, check them out!

 

Hope you enjoy it.

Here's a song from Kuninaka Ryoko called Ryukyu Moon.  Nice Shamisen playing in the background.  

 

 

Wow, finally!  Got myself into the 200 club!

 

And what's the 200 Club do you ask? How do you get into the 200 Club?

 

Well, you get there after you have copletely, throughly, played and finish a Xbox Live Arcade game!

 

And the game that got me there was........   Heavy Weapon!